Converting 7D/T2i Footage to ProRes

S

STEproductions

Member
Hey guys,

I know this topic has been covered several times, and I spent a lot of time yesterday doing searches, but I've still got a specific problem that I couldn't find and answer to. I have a bunch of 7D footage a friend gave me that I'm going to be editing in FCP 7, and I'm trying to nail down a good workflow that I can come back to for future use. I was able to do it in Compressor, and MPEG Streamclip, but I'd like my conversion solution to just stay in Final Cut. I also noticed that Compressor and MPEG slightly altered that color, where doing it directly in Final Cut didn't seem to.

I downloaded the software release from Canon (The E1 EOS Movie Plugin), which allows you to make the conversion using Log and Transfer. Now, I don't have the Camera or card, I just have a harddrive with the files. Canon makes it clear though in the most updated version of this Plugin (April), that you do not need to have the entire card (or a copy of it), and that you should be able to just drop 7D files in H.264 format, into your Log and Transfer. Then you should be able to go into preferences (the gear thing in the top left) and select the Canon plugin, and select your type of ProRes (HQ, LT, Proxy, etc.).

This is about as far as I can get with this method. When I click on the "Add File" button on the top left of Log and Transfer, I then go through my computer and locate the folder with my H.264 files, but when I find them they are greyed out, so I can't click on them. When I try just dragging and dropping them into Log and Tranfer, the wheel starts to spin, and a message saying "Adding file" displays, but after about 1 minute, FCP with just should down. After it closes, it says there was FCP experienced an error with the Canon E1 plugin.

I called a friend at this point who is an experienced FCP user, and after talking about the problem for a few minutes, he told me to just use a different method entirely. He showed me how to go into your Final Cut browser, and do a batch export of your H.264 files, using the desired ProRes codec. It allows you to choose the destination folder to export to, and seems to work just great. I just found it weird that in all my searching, no one else mentioned this method. What are you guys doing?

My one hold up is that is seemed to take a while to do... Maybe Compressor, MPEG Streamclip, or the Log and Tranfer with Canon Plugin are faster methods. It probably took 4 or 5 hours to convert about 2.5 hours of footage. The result is great though. I'll be happy continuing to use Batch Export to convert my H.264 clips, I just wanted to know if there are any potential problems with this method that I haven't encountered yet.

Scott
 
I use Compressor and generally expect something like those as conversion times. It's not fast but the results are worth it and you only have to do it once.

Noah
 
Cool. What do you mean by you only have to do it once? Using the Batch Export, I only had to export once, after highlighting all of the takes. Is that what you meant, or are you referring to something else?
 
No I meant the process of conversion- personally I just transfer all. By the time you mark in/out and set up a batch of some sort it's more effort than simply blazing through everything all at once.

Noah
 
On a current project I was handed about 700gb of 7D footage on a drive and converting it all to ProRes didn't seem like a great use of hard drive space. After spending like a week reviewing and marking things in the Finder, I ended up using Toast instead of Compressor for the encode as it seemed to be marginally faster and more stable during the conversion process.
 
Toast? Ive run into conversion problems with that for other conversions (i.e. DVD encoding, web encoding..etc)
MPEG Streamclip FTW! Then you can use FinalCut's Compressor app, also 5DtoRGB, and tons of other apps...even Clipwrap.
Anyhow, dragging everything into FCP and then exporting to ProRes isn't a good way to go about it.
MPEG Streamclip, is free and works just great with Canon footage. In the batch mode, you can even select how many clips are being converted at once... so its a very fast tool to use.
There is Canon's native software as well... but i dont have experience with that.
 
Cool, thanks for the info. Could you elaborate though on why not to just batch export from FCP? I didnt have any problem with it, and the footage looks great.Scott
daihard said:
Toast? Ive run into conversion problems with that for other conversions (i.e. DVD encoding, web encoding..etc)MPEG Streamclip FTW! Then you can use FinalCut's Compressor app, also 5DtoRGB, and tons of other apps...even Clipwrap.Anyhow, dragging everything into FCP and then exporting to ProRes isn't a good way to go about it.MPEG Streamclip, is free and works just great with Canon footage. In the batch mode, you can even select how many clips are being converted at once... so its a very fast tool to use.There is Canon's native software as well... but i dont have experience with that.
Click to expand...
 
Well, im not sure what your doing exactly with FCP. But it sounds like your transcoding raw 7D footage into ProRes, then re-importing it to edit.
While this method works, its not a common technique. But if its working for you, then continue with whats comfortable.
 
Cool. Essentially, yes, I'm dragging 7D clips into my FCP browser, highlighting them, then right clicking "Batch Export." It then gives you plenty of options for setting codec, destination, etc. From there I just let it run.
 
STEproductions said:
Cool. Essentially, yes, I'm dragging 7D clips into my FCP browser, highlighting them, then right clicking "Batch Export." It then gives you plenty of options for setting codec, destination, etc. From there I just let it run.
Click to expand...

Compressor gives you all the same options and can be set up to use all your cores. Even with transcoding becoming more of a background process it still boggles my mind that people that have Compressor look for another program. Compressor is one of the most powerful transcoding programs ever made. I know a broadcast facility that switched from a $15,000 per seat program to Compressor because it was faster and more controllable. They bought 20 seats of Final Cut Studio just for compressor.
 
Compressor has never really been stable for me on any of my systems. Whenever I try to add a large number of files to a new job, the program will stall like nobody's business. Then when it (maybe) loads all the clips, it continues to stall when I try to apply different settings. Even if I create a batch droplet, the interface will lag and crash if I try to add more than 10 clips.

I do use Compressor to do my exports out of Final Cut, but when I need to transcode a large volume of files I usually use something else that isn't so crash prone.
 
can someone help me out here?
I'm editing 7D footage in final cut pro. I've been shooting 1080 24p, but I've also shot some 720 60p footage for slow motion. what are the steps for bringing this 720 60p footage into my project for slow motion? do i convert it to pro-res first and then some other step?

Thanks
 
Convert it to the ProRes flavor of your choice, open the video in Cinema Tools and conform it to 23.98 fps playback.
 
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